be sure to follow me on facebook and twitte twitter @jaketapper. that is it for "the lead" today. i turn you over to wolf blitzer. he's in "the situation room." thanks for watching. happening now, breaking news. extremely dangerous. the latest forecast is just coming in for hurricane irma. themonster is smashing through small islands and aiming for the united states. tens of millions may be in the path of the storm and evacuations are already underway in florida, including low-lying areas of the greater miami area which alone has some 6 million people. could a mass evacuation lead to gridlo gridlock? dealing with democrats. president trump bucks his own party and strikes a deal with democrats to ensure passage of

disaster relief funding along with short-term debt ceiling increase and spending measures. gop leaders say they were blindsided. closed door testimony. with congress back in session, the russia investigations are clearly picking up steam. donald trump jr. will go behind closed doors at the senate judiciary committee as former obama national security adviser susan rice sits down with the house intelligence committee. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." the breaking news, the latest forecast is just coming in for hurricane irma now hammering the caribbean with winds of 185 miles an hour. one of the strongest atlantic storms ever. it's on a path to wreak havoc in florida and potentially up the coast. depending on irma's track in the days ahead, tens of millions of

people could be in harm's way. the storms are now battering puerto rico after beating up a cluster of caribbean islands. the four strongest government buildings there were destroyed. the concern is that similar scenes could play out in florida where mandatory evacuations have begun and more are expected. the governor is activating the national guard and calling for volunteers. after the house today approved the nearly $8 billion initial disaster relief package in the wake of hurricane harvey, president trump siding with democrats on a deal that provides disaster relief. raise the debt ceiling for three months and pass a short-term spending bill. the president says he has no second thoughts about his decision to protect 800,000 immigrants that came here as children. but he astounded everyone by

saying if congress can't fix the problem in six months, he'll, quote, revisit the issue. i'll speak to fema chairman brock long. special guests are also standing by with full coverage of today's top stories. let's start with the breaking news. a new forecast is just in for hurricane irma. let's go to tom sater at the severe weather center. what's the latest, tom? >> we're actually not seeing much of a change in the national hurricane center, wolf. is their track from this morning any different for this afternoon? no, not much. it still wants to place it right around miami and the east coast of florida. irma is now the strongest hurricane to ever plow into the leeward islands. yesterday we mentioned only hurricane alan from 1980 was stronger by 5 miles an hour. irma today, however, has

surpassed alan. by continuing to churn for 24 hours with winds over 180. alan nefertiti dver did that. we are getting a closer look at this eye which is 450 miles in diameter. communication is out. power is out. until the back edge slides through these islands, aircraft will not be able to get up to assess the damage from above. i'm sure civil emergency management crews are on the ground trying to assess the damage, but we've had no contact. the system is moving at 116 miles an hour. if you look at the gusts, 118, 515, 185 and then the instrument broke. that's how massive the storm is. four to six-foot storm surge. hurricane force winds are spreading across the island. so again, heavy amounts of rain mainly in the mountainous areas.

could cause, obviously, some landslides and heavy flooding along the coastline. they're expecting a storm surge of 20 to 25 feet because they're going to be in the north and northeastern quadrant. that's where the winds are, and those winds will be a little stronger on surf waves as they crash into that area. from last night until this morning, the national hurricane center shifted their center -- now where we have our little category 4 in southern florida -- shifted to about 17 miles eastward. they have the cone of uncertainty shifting west if the system decides to edge that direction. but they also have that cone of uncertainty further eastward, which may tell us if it's continuing to trend eastward, maybe we're looking at a landfall either in miami, the east coast of florida or into the carolinas. let's break it down a little closer for you, look at these spaghetti plots. another change was this. yesterday more of the models

moved in to cuba. higher terrain with mountains over 6,000 meters would maybe break it down to a category 2. most models do not interact with cuba now so it turned at the very warm waters. now with that shift eastward, it looks like monroe county, miami-dade, right on miami, maybe even making its way right along the coast and cape canavaral. let's put this into motion. you're going to see no interaction with cuba. here is landfall near miami. it continues to make it ws way northward. both models carry it over open water and into the carolinas. we have an interesting situation we're setting up, because we now have jose back behind the system as a hurricane and another one. just to remind you what matthew did along the coastline, $15

million in economic losses, and that was just off the coast. guess what? katia just became a hurricane. in the southern gulf of mexico, we have three. it has not happened since 2010 when we had carlo, julia and igor, i believe it was, but jose may become a category 3 in the lesser antilles before turning northward. this is getting silly, wolf. >> it certainly is. hurricane irma is already tracking a path of destruction across puerto rico. brian todd monitoring the storm for us. >> at this point it has struck more than 300 miles and it is growing. the storm is hitting near puerto rico now. in places where it's just past, people are describing walls shaking and said they had to take shelter in bathrooms just to survive. on the caribbean island of st.

martin, wind and rain so powerful, it's difficult to see through it. hurricane irma pounded this home in the british virgin island as people inside try to ride it out. one oceanfront hotel in st. martin flooded right through the courtyard this morning. officials say the island of barbuda was so damages, hurricane irma flies directly into the storm. with a maximum sustained winds of 185 miles an hour, irma is the strongest storm ever recorded in the atlantic, outside of the gulf of mexico and the caribbean. storm surge could reach as high as 20 feet in some places. wind and rain started to lash puerto rico this afternoon. >> the whole house is vibrating, the glass is shaking.

>> reporter: islands that are usually a tropical paradise, like st. thomas, gave them a look at what they might be in for this weekend. governor rick scott are warning all his residents, not just some, to have a plan. >> a storm this size could be affected statewide. this is not a storm ubyou can s and wait through. >> so far only the florida keys and some parts of broward county are awaiting evacuations. also, long gas lines and scattered and empty grocery store shelves. >> my advice is to leave early. we don't want you to be caught in a hurricane hin your car. that's the worst thing you can do. >> if this triggers one of the

storms, they are waiving tolls on the roads to help ease traffic, wolf. that ought to help. >> it will help but it will be tense, brian. the most dangerous core of irma is expected to pass near or just before puerto rico. george is in puerto rico for us now, george. what are the conditions there, george? >> it's getting worse hour after hour. you can see the winds. just a few moments ago, we felt one of those intense wind gusts come through. those come by one after another after another. that's the situation right now with the winds, keeping in mind we're very close, as you say, to that eye of the storm that will get some 30 miles close to the north shore of this island. so officials telling people to seek shelter. there is a mandatory evacuation here for people to go to safer ground, to go to any of these 500 shelters that are available.

let's talk about the flooding, the possibility of storm surge and also storm swell. that could be anywhere from two to three feet storm surge, and then storm swell later, wolf, can get anywhere from 25 to 30 feet of water. you're talking two to three stories of water that can come in on any part of this island. again, the north and eastern parts that are affected. what we're watching right now, conditions are getting worse. around 8:00 p.m. tonight, that's when we understand we'll be closest to the eye of the storm, closest to the churning, the most intense part of this storm, so that's when conditions will be the worst and getting even worse through the night. >> are people really prepared for this? because it looks like it could be a disaster, george. >> as prepared as they can be, wolf. we're talking about a category 5 hurricane. nothing like this has been recorded in the atlantic. this island is accustomed to these big storms coming through, but nothing like this.

there is concern of the electrical grid which is already like this. this is an island grappling with a debt crisis, $70 billion in debt. so residents wonder what does recovery look like? what does that take? right now it's a matter of wait and see. every time i look, i know it's coming this way. it's a matter of waiting to see how bad this damage s wolf. >>. joining us now, the head of the emergency management federal agency, brock long. thanks for joining us. i know you're incredibly busy. what should the people down in south florida be doing right now to prepare? >> they better be listening to local officials and the orders coming from government officials and scott rick right now.

no american is prepared to be hit by a category 4 or 5 hurricane. life safety is the message. make sure you understand why they're asking you to evacuate, and when they do, please heed the warning. >> as you know, it's so difficult to evacuate florida because it's a peninsula, so everyone has to go in the same direction. we're still a few days away from landfall. do you believe the gridlock could make it possible for some people? >> i don't know that, but i know florida is trying to phase the evacuation message out. they started yesterday with the florida keys in monroe county and they're moving people progressively upstate and out. i have great communication with governor scott in the florida division of emergency management. >> is there a plan in place to deal with people who eventually will be stuck on the roadways as

the storm approaches? >> well, so the goal is to get people out of the storm surge areas. you don't want to be in an area that's going to experience storm surge. you have to, so that's the goal. we're not at a refuge. i need to see what happens in the next 24 hours. >> fema resources have already been focused in on southeast texas, the recovery from hurricane harvey. are we stretched too thin to deal with irma? >> we're not stretched too thin. we established recovery command in texas, so we have a good footprint to make sure we do everything in texas, start the

cleanup. >> what has basically come to a close in texas, wee now positioning search and rescue teams and other commodities into the south. >> if fema does shift resources out, would that hurt the recovery effort in texas? >> no, it shouldn't. the goal is we have recovery equipment in texas, we have good communication with the governor and achieve their recovery goals. this is not just going to be a florida hit. we're looking so the southeast. if this thing could encroach to alabama and georgia, or if it

follows the forecast track, it's going to be an east coast problem in south carolina, north carolina and georgia as well. we're preparing for a multi-state hit in the united states. >> have you ever seen a monster of a storm like this approach the united states? >> it's a big storm. category 5, landfalling events are very rare if my memory serves me correct. we hoonly had four category stos since 1951, so we would be breaking harvey pirs. are you confident that congress will set aside enough funding for fema? >> that's up to congress, and i know congress and the homeland security have been working together very closely.

they're concerned but we should be operating in kick start. i'm not letting money get in the way of my operation and i'm pushing forward. >> good luck to the workers, all the people of fema. you're doing lifesaving fork. . we're counting on fema to get the job done. >> real quick, it's the whole community. it's like what we saw on harvey, too. it's the citizens all the way up to the management agency. >> it certainly is. we're grateful to everyone involved. brock, thank you for everything you're doing. appreciate it very much. good luck. >> thank you, wolf. we'll have more on the breaking news. we're tracking irma right now as it rips through the caribbean while florida braces for a potentially devastating blow. president trump says he has no second thoughts about his decision to end protections for nearly 800,000 dreamers.

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florida is now bracing for impact with millions and millions of people in the path of the storm. mandatory evacuations have already begun. also breaking. president trump tries to deal with the fallout from his dreamers decision even as he makes the debt ceiling deal with democrats. let's go to our senior white house correspondent jim acosta. jim, a lot of twists and turns today. >> that's right, wolf. president trump tried to clean up the mess left behind after his decision on the dreamers. he insisted to reporters he is

not sending mixed signals despite some pretty clear waffling on the subject. perhaps more surprising was the president's sudden embrace on democratic leaders to prevent a government shutdown this month. to do so, the president bucked his own party and we're told even his own treasury secretary. president trump's message one day after terminating the program that shielded young undocumented immigrants from deportation, he would do it again. >> no second thoughts. >> reporter: just hours after igniting an uproar, the president announced he was wavering on the issue, tweeting, congress for six months as leto legalize daca, something the obama administration wasn't able to do. he then indicated he was backing down. >> congress, i really believe, wants to take care of the situation. i could see something where we have good border security and we

have a great daca transaction where everybody is happy and now they don't have to worry about it anymore, because obviously, as you know, before it was not a legal deal. >> reporter: the president cited one surprising reason for his optimism, the potential for working with not republicans, but democrats and leaders in congress, namely chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. >> chuck and nancy would like to see something happen, and so would i. if we could see something happen, we'll sign it and make a lot of happy people. >> reporter: that's remarkable given pelosi and schumer just blasted the president's decision known as daca. >> we all agree that the president's decision to end daca is a despicable act of political cowardice. >> the president's decision to end daca was heartless and it was brainless. >> reporter: and after house speaker paul ryan praised the president. >> so president trump was right in his decision. he made the right call. >> reporter: but there were more surprises in store.

sources told cnn the president also blindsided gop leaders as they huddled with their democratic counterparts and mr. trump at the white house. the president shocked republicans, supporting the democrats' plan to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown, pushing that deadline to december. the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell indicated afterward that he was on board. >> i will be adding that to an amendment of the flood relief bill that's come over from the house on the floor, and i'll be supporting it. >> reporter: republicans sounded so irritated by the meeting, one vented about ivanka trump interrupting the gathering. at one point ivanka trump entered the oval office to say hello and the meeting careened off topic. republican leaders were visibly upset by the interruption. some say that wasn't true. >> she actually said, daddy can i go with you? i said, yes, you can.

>> reporter: at a tax reform speech in north dakota, the president seemed to touch on the upside down day on capitol hill. >> mitch and paul and everybody, kevin. we walked out, and everybody was happy. not too happy because you can never be too happy. but they were happy enough. >> reporter: despite that happiness and even with all that on the president's plate, the president still has to keep an eye on the russian investigation. tomorrow the president's son, donald trump jr., is scheduled to meet with staffers of the senate judiciary committee. one of the members of that, diane feinstein, insisted that donald trump jr. testify in public to tell about all he knows about russian meddling, wolf. congress back in session. this russia investigation is clearly picking up lots of steam. joining us, the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, democratic congressman adam schiff of california. congressman, we have lots to discuss. there is lots of breaking news. i need to take a quick break. we'll have our conversation

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our breaking news as hurricane irma slashes across the caribbean, florida is embracing for a potential devastating impact. we're tracking all the developments. we'll update you on that in just a few moments, but there's other big news we're following tonight as well. congress is back and there are new twists in the russia investigations. joining us now, the ranking member of the house intelligence

committee, democratic congressman adam schiff of california. congressman, thanks so much for joining us. >> you bet. good to be here. >> very curious development. your chairman, devon nunez, a letter threatening to hold sessions and the fbi director christopher wray in contempt of congress if they don't hand over documents related to that so-called dossier compiled by a former british intelligent agent. the dossier contains allegations about trump's personal and financial life. as you know, chairman nunez removed himself from the russia investigation. why is he doing this now? >> he shouldn't be. this has been a continuing issue. the chairman, when he recused or stepped aside, should have delegated the authorities, as our rules permit, to mr. conaway, but he was unwilling to do so. so he still informally issues subpoenas, he still writes letters to the department of justice and the fbi taking issue

with their production, which is also something frankly i don't understand, and we raised the issue with the majority when they said they wanted to subpoena the department, and that is we hadn't even sent them a voluntary request for the information, and our practice has been we request voluntary compliance only when they refuse to issue a subpoena. it seems like they want to discredit mr. steele and also discredit the fbi's investigation. i don't know what's to be gained by that, honestly. it doesn't bring us any closer to figuring out what the russians did and how they did it. so we don't agree with what they did and i think it's an unfortunate distraction. >> do you believe chairman nunez really is going to hold the fbi director, the attorney general in contempt? >> no, i don't. and the threat to bring the attorney general before our committee in an open hearing, i would welcome that. bring him in. there are a lot of questions i would like to ask the attorney general. i can't imagine they would actually follow through with that, but frankly i would be

delighted if they did. >> have you spoken with chairman nunez about this? >> we don't discuss the russian investigation because he recused himself from it. he really should play a role in it. so i confine my discussions on that to mr. conaway and the other members working on it. >> if he recused himself or removed himself from the russian investigation, why is he writing these kinds of letters? >> he shouldn't be. he shouldn't be. only he can explain why he's taken that role. >> it's a very serious development. another statement coming out from facebook today. it said they sold about $100,000 of advertisements to what they call inauthentic accounts operated out of russia during the campaign. facebook said they shared this information with investigators. are you concerned that these ads may have deliberately targeted voters in some of those key swing states? >> you know, this is information that we're trying to gather. from what i understand, and i've only gotten a preliminary briefing about this, facebook's conclusion is that most were not

geographically targeted, although some were. and among those that were, we need to find out why and what subjects. and were they at a level of sophistication where they would have needed help or atssistance from the campaign. those are unanswered questions we wanted to get to the bottom of. i think we already knew the russians were using paid social media trolls to try to rig the election. we want to inspect social media platforms as well. to what evidence, to what degree? 100,000 may seem like it's not a huge amount, but at the same time, that's a lot of people seeing and liking and passing on this information, and that can be influential. >> are you concerned that may be just the tip of the iceberg, that there were other operations involving russians in the u.s. presidential election? >> this is just one platform. we need to find out what is the

evidence with respect to other social media platforms like twitter, for example. what kind of internal analyses have these other companies done? were there things they missed earlier on when they didn't believe this activity had necessarily occurred? so we do have a lot of questions. facebook, i think, has been very cooperative with us, but still, there is a lot we need to press on this. >> another significant development unfolding. we learned last week that the president, president trump's personal lawyer michael kohn asked the kremlin for help potentially with developing a tower hotel development in moscow during the campaign last year. it never wound up happening, but as you know, at the time donald trump always repeatedly denied he had no business dealings with the russians. how do these revelations affect, if they do, your investigation? >> well, you know, they certainly raise additional concerns because now we know that the trump organization was pursuing business in russia, a business that would effectively have to be approved by putin.

at the same time the campaign was taking a very pro-russia, pro-putin policy. was this being guided by their financial interests? and why did the president make false statements about his financial interests in doing business in russia at a time when he was pursuing that? that also means we can't accept any representations coming from the president or his organization about whether the russians have done business with him in the past. among the chief concerns i have is the issue of money laundering. if the russians had been engaged in business with the trump organization and some of that business was elicit, like money laundering -- >> explain that, what do you mean by money laundering? >> campaigning is a good time to launder money. if financial institutions had to turn elsewhere and there was a marrying of interest between the trump organization and the russians who have historically need to do launder huge amounts of money and they did business

together in that way, that is far more compromising than any selacious video would be. so in our national interests, we need to make sure, did this happen, did it not happen? if it did, it means the russians have continuing leverage over the president of the united states. >> do you know right now whether or not there was this kind of money laundering that was going on? >> this is the subject of the investigation. i think we need to try to figure out whether this occurred. if it did, we need to be able to tell the american people about it. if it didn't, we need to be able to tell the american people about it. i also think this is something bob mueller is uniquely capable of ascertaining. he has a lot of resources devoted to this and expertise among his staff that we simply don't have in congress. >> is this something your house committee is undertaking? >> we continue to follow developments of the scope of our investigation. i certainly think this could be

an area of the campaign. i think it would be negligent for us not to get to the bottom of it. >> president obama's national security adviser susan rice met with your committee earlier today behind closed doors. what, if anything, can you tell us about that meeting? >> we don't usually go into the contents of our closed meetings. we allow the witnesses to discuss it if they wish. the most i can say is she was completely forthcoming with us, answered every question she had. i think everyone was satisfied with her testimony. >> the justice department revealed the other day that there is no evidence that president obama ordered the wiretapping of trump tower during the campaign, remember the allegation that was leveled by donald trump at the time. what do you make of that revelation coming out right now? >> to be the definitive explanation point after comey testified to that and rogers testified to that, and everyone

else who has been asked that was in the intelligence community has essentially said the same thing. no evidence behind the president's baseless claim. but that claim lives on in a different way. it lives on in the form of an unmasking inquiry that's being done. the suggestion now is, okay, maybe there wasn't deliberate wiretapping of trump tower. maybe the president got that wrong but somehow there was back door surveillance of unmasking. that tweet lives on, i think, in a way it should have been put to rest a long time ago. >> congressman adam schiff, thank you for joining us. >> thanks, wolf. stay with us, we're getting updates right now on the disaster hurricane irma. it's leaving as it batters the island of the caribbean, it's heading toward the united states and florida right now. millions of people are preparing for the worst. we'll have an updated forecast. that's coming up. my mom's pain from

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let's bring in our political specialist. dana, i want you and our viewers to take a look at this photo, a photo of president trump and chuck schumer, the democrat leader, the minority leader, in the oval office. look at that picture. they seem to be best friends in that picture, but republicans were reportedly stunned by the president's sudden alliance with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. what happened in the oval office? >> what happened is that the president completely surprised everybody. the republicans and the democrats by effectively ignoring the pleas from republicans -- republican leaders in congress to go along with what they thought was a plan to push for an extension, first of all, at the most -- excuse me, at the very least, 18 months for the debt limit. because they thought tactically and then just policy and politically, for all those reasons, that they would want to kind of take it down past the

next election. well, the president not only said no to that, i am told by a source who was familiar with the meeting, then the republicans said, okay, 12 months. no. okay, six months. no. democrats were firm on saying three months and that's it and we'll tie it to the relief for hurricane harvey and the president said, okay, deal. and at that point, the republican leader, the majority leader mitch mcconnell said, okay, if we're going to do that, let's extend the funding for the government so we have it in one package. i was told the republican leaders were shell-shocked. they didn't expect it. certainly the democrats didn't expect it. they thought they were just going to come out with a kind of agreeing to disagree situation which they usually do, and that's not what happened at all. and there are a lot of republicans on capitol hill who are -- feel pretty blindsided but you also have a president who said, you know what? i am ready to do a deal. i am sick of this fighting. we've seen over the past couple of months that the president also doesn't have a lot of faith

in the republican leaders, and i think this was an example of that coming through. >> gloria just listened to the speaker paul ryan before that meeting in the oval office. he n he made it clear where he stands. >> it seems like they're trying to extract something. >> i think that's a ridiculous idea. i hope they don't mean that. let's just think about this. we've got all this devastation in texas. we've got another unprecedented hurricane about to hit florida, and they want to play politics with the debt ceiling? that will strand the aid that we need to bring to these victims of these storms that have occurred or are about to occur, and they also want to threaten to fault our debt? i think that's disgraceful. >> this is not about what the republican party wants or what the republican leaders want. i know the president spent half

the summer dissing mitch mcconnell on twitter, for goodness sake. this is what donald trump wanted, and donald trump showed us that, okay, i can get my hurricane funding through, i'm not going to let it get tied up. he was thoroughly affected by what he saw in texas and what's coming to florida. and he decided that it didn't matter that republicans feel they're walking into a trap here because they're going to have to vote on rages the debt ceiling again in december. and what it also means is that the republicans understand now that the president doesn't care about them. so it will affect, i think, and dana, correct me if i'm wrong here, but it will affect what they do on tax reform and on everything else, because they have clearly parted ways. >> clearly the democrats, though, got what they wanted, dean deanna. by the way, welcome to cnn, cnn contributor. glad to have you as part of our

team. in 2013 donald trump tweeted against a debt ceiling. they have just offered to suspend the debt ceiling for four months. pathet pathetic! back in 2013 that's what he tweeted then. was the president just outstarted >> we call it a tale of two don alds. there is a tweet for everything the president has said from his private life, can be contradicted from what he's saying when he's in office. the president, many republicans could argue, does come across as very debt pratt for a deal. we only had 12 legislative days in the month. he has this huge russia investigation headache. he saw the devastation firsthand in texas. he sees what's happening in the caribbean as well. but listen, he could have at least tried to extend the debt limit for longer.

you have zero time to get tax reform done. i completely agree with dana and gloria. he could have tied higher defense spending or attempted to. i will say this is the president that never ceases to surprise. so, never say never until the ink is dry. and i was also struck by what mitch mcconnell said. he said, this president speaks for himself. remember who else said that? rex tillerson. rex tillerson said that last week when he was asked about charlottesville. so you do see this public divide within the party. >> not only does he speak for himself vis-a-vis congressional republican leaders, i'm told it happened within his own administration. in this meeting he cut off his own treasury secretary who was making the argument for extending debt limit for a longer period of time. of course it is the treasury secretary in any administration that has to deal with the debt limit and kind of gets a sense of when the u.s. is bumping up against the point where it has to be raised. and it was the president who said, you know what? huh-uh, and he moved on.

and also if you kind of take a step back, this is the donald trump that a lot of people coming into the inauguration thought that they might see, a donald trump who, is he a real republican? he doesn't know the ways of washington so is he then going to say, forget you, fellow republicans, i am going to do a deal with democrats? it hasn't happened, and today it happened. so, it does show a different side of him. and it might, it might be because he has the past eight months of experience where he's gotten very frustrated with his fellow republican leaders and the way washington works normally with party politics. or, you know, might be just the idea that he really did see this devastation and wants to move it forward, or all the above. >> you know, this is donald trump. as we were talking about before, he is not a politician by training, and he cares about himself and how he's perceived. and he wants to be perceived as somebody who is funding hurricane relief period.

and i don't think he wanted anything to get in the way of that, including his own political party, and including his own political future in terms of what he can get done in the congress. this is who he is. we haven't seen a lot of it because there has been this push and pull in the white house for who can get to donald trump and who is he going to agree with today. well, what does this mean for daca, for example? we don't know, you know. the president's tweet this morning about daca was, well, maybe we'll revisit it. what does that mean? as we've been fond of saying, leaders say the president speaks for himself. members of his press team say the president's tweets speak for themselves. and everybody is still left scratching their heads. >> i want to get back there, bianna. he was so nice and friendly with the democratic leaders, calling nancy and chuck as if they were old pals. and that's clearly going to put a lot of republicans in an awkward position. >> yeah, dnc is calling chuck

schumer crying chuck or fake tears. i'm glad i'm a contributor especially with cnn, i'm so thrilled to be here. if i were in the p.r. business, i would tell the democrats the last thing they should be doing is gloating right now. the president follows the media very closely. and as we saw that head scratcher tweet this morning about daca and him potentially revisiting it, if he sees that he's getting a lot of push back from this and the democrats view this as a huge win he could very well change his mind. as i said earlier, the ink is not dry. >> ben sass republican from utah tweeted and called it the schumer/pelosi/trump deal and said it's bad. and, you know, so, it's already being called schumer/pelosi/trump. >> let's see how the president relives the deal. everybody stand by. there is breaking news we're following. hurricane irma, a category 5 monster, it's battering islands in the caribbean and aiming for the united states. right now tens of millions of people may be in the path of the

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happening now, breaking news. record breaking threat. irma, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever seen in the atlantic is churning toward puerto rico and florida ravaging caribbean islands as it takes aim at the u.s. main land.

where will this monster storm strike next? racing to leave, dire warnings prompt thousands of people to flee as hurricane irma barrels toward american soil, packing wind gusts over 200 miles an hour. we are already seeing traffic jams and water and gasoline shortages. is florida prepared for a mass exodus? blind siding his party, president trump stuns republican leaders by cutting a deal with democrats to fund disaster relief while raising the debt ceiling for only three months, just hours after house speaker paul ryan called that idea ridiculous. why is the president bucking the gop? and we'll see what happens. mr. trump says military action against north korea isn't his first choice, but he won't rule out armed intervention to stop kim jong-un's aggressive quest for nuclear capable long-range missiles. can new u.s. pressure on china calm the crisis? we want to